I am that which I am
by readerofasaph
Summary: Years later, someone finally catches up with Ging. Warning: implied character death


"This is the fourteenth day you've been shadowing me, with the intent to kill," said Ging Freecs. He stood at the edge of a cliff, his back to the sea. "I was going to wait until you were ready to come out, but I couldn't stop wondering - 'Is he trying to frighten me, or seduce me?' But now I'm tired of thinking about it." Ging turned. "Come out now, or I attack."

There was a small but tangible change in the atmosphere, the disappearance of a subtle presence even the seabirds might not have noticed. For a second everything was empty, nothing but seagulls and whistling breeze and the groan of the high tide.

A blur (not a person, not to the naked eye) seemed to appear out of nowhere and came straight in for an attack, two small high-momentum objects whirling at Ging.

Ging was ready. Or thought he was. He dodged the first. The second got his knee cap.

It was the kind of strike that would have shattered the leg of an ordinary human, or even a Hunter. The electrical voltage that accompanied it was five times the lethal dose. He leaped back, scented his own burnt flesh. His patella, he knew, was fractured.

The blur – now slow enough to be discerned as a boy – moved in for a second attack.

It was not the moment for finesse, and so Ging threw the equivalent of a military warhead in aura at the figure coming at him.

He dropped into the gap that formed as the cliff broke apart, murmuring a quick apology to the bird nests he'd just destroyed, the myriad small life forces he'd just snuffed out.

He landed on his good leg, in rubble and wet sand. All around his protective nen shield were falling rocks and blinding dust, the sound of the sea, and – absence. Shadow. The nothingness of his stalker.

Then there was a boy standing ankle-deep in ocean, clutching a fishing pole. Watching Ging.

Ready to kill, Ging sensed, and ready to die.

Dimly, he recognised the pole, but no obvious connection came to mind. More fascinating was the boy. "How did you find me?" asked Ging. It wasn't the first time he'd been stalked. It wouldn't be the last.

There were two sorts of people who hunted Ging – firstly and most frequently, those who encountered him in the here and now, and hated him, or wanted him, and so gave chase. Sometimes they were interesting people. Often they weren't.

Then there were the ones from Ging's past, the ones whose hearts he'd broken, the ones whose pride he'd shattered – or the ones who knew him only by reputation, as a trophy to be chased. There were many of those, Ging was certain – but he never saw them. They never found him.

Only Kaito, and no one after or before. Until this kid.

"Effort," replied the boy, drawing nearer. There was still murderous intent in the air, mingled with a certain lethal allurement – given half a chance, Ging knew, they'd battle for _days_, without sleep, without water – but now that it was up close the aura easier to read. A killer and a hedonist, but not here for death or pleasure.

"I don't remember you," he said. "Did I kill your father? Your mother?"

The boy laughed. "My parents kill people. People don't kill them."

"Then were you hired to follow me? Someone like you couldn't be that desperate for money."

"I came to give you these," said the kid. The fishing pole came flying across the space between them. It was followed by something smaller, that landed on the broken seashells at Ging's feet.

He caught the pole easily. Its weight was old and familiar in his hand. "This isn't mine." It was true. He'd given it away, a long time ago.

"It is now."

"Neither is the license." The kid raised his brows, and Ging elaborated. "I gave up on all that. I don't like being boxed in."

"Yes." Transiently there was the true desire for murder, too fleeting for Ging to respond physically. "I knew that."

They watched each other for long minutes as the dust settled, as the sea lapped at the broken stones around them. Ging spoke: "He chose not to see me, then."

For the first time the boy's eyes flashed true emotion. "Don't make assumptions, you stupid old man."

"If he wanted it enough, he'd have come. He's my son," Ging said, as if the fact was simple and explained all. It was not and did not. But the boy paused.

"Yeah, maybe."

"Do you want to stay a while, now that you're here?" Ging asked, feeling the withdrawal of the boy's nen, the unmistakable preparation for a swift retreat – _the_ swiftest Ging had ever seen, he thought, and in his lifetime he'd raced cheetahs and killed giant gazelles and ridden birds that flew like sound.

"No reason to."

"It'll be fun, I promise." Ging thinned out his nen-shields and shifted position, allowing himself a wince at his destroyed leg. "Definitely more fun than deliberately killing yourself. "

The kid froze.

Ging leaned down and picked up the license sitting at his feet. "You've got one of these, haven't you?"

"Maybe. What's it to you?"

"Nothing at all." Ging said. "I was planning to go deep-trench diving next. They say there's pearls the size of elephant's heads in the deepest parts of the Peace Ocean. Nineteen out of twenty divers who go there die trying to get one. The twentieth fails."

The boy was listening.

"Interested?" Ging asked.

"You're a transformation user, aren't you?" said the boy finally.

Ging shrugged. "So are you. Let me guess – he was reinforcement?"

"Don't talk about him," snapped the boy.

"If you say so." The kid had that right, Ging thought, recalling a game on an island somewhere, and a duo of magical cards. _You were chosen. Over me_. Though it was not the time to talk about that.

Ging stepped across the wrecked seaside, closing the distance between them. The boy stilled and held his yo-yos, his posture silken and deadly like a cat of high intelligence. But he allowed himself to be touched, then hugged.

"Thank you," Ging told him.

In the end they went together to find a place for a campfire, walking side-by-side, the boy still hovering – he would hover for a while yet, it was plain to see, perhaps forever – in that beautiful place on the border between life and death. As for Ging himself, he was heartbroken, but only to the extent that his heart could break; he was filled with that hollowed-out emotion he had only felt twice before,and that he would never feel again. But it was a feeling that had nothing to with regret.


End file.
